Stay
by joelmillers
Summary: The story of how Tommy met Maria. A collaboration with tumblr user nocoffeeforoldmen.


It had rained on and off for his entire first week in the community just beyond the old hydroelectric power plant. Even though he tried his best to get the things he could fix fixed up while he was there, the rain was impeding on his progress. It was never a simple drizzle either: it was the kind of rain that he remembered only came once a year—if they were lucky—back home in Texas. The kind that they always appreciated back home, but he could distinctly remember his father grumbling to himself as he made his way down into the basement with a large bucket in hand. Their basement never failed to flood during bad rains, and it would always lead his mother to worry incessantly about the pictures and other various objects down there.

In Wyoming, there was much more to worry about that a simple flooding basement. Plenty of the roofs were in pretty rough shape and cool rain dripped into the places families called their homes, leaving the buildings with an uncomfortable wet feeling on top of the cool that was starting to take over before winter began. He had taken to patching up a few of them when the rain would let up. Even though, as he explained, the fixes wouldn't be permanent, the people still seemed as grateful as they could be to a member of the group that had killed nearly a dozen men and women alike who had come from their town.

The second week was even work. He found himself wishing for those droughts back in Texas. At least then there was nothing stopping him doing his part for the woman who had been letting him stay there with her. One night had turned into two days. Two days became a week. A week then turned into two, and he couldn't wrap his mind around why. He was, for all intents and purposes, the enemy of these people. They could have easily just killed him upon arriving at their gate, but they didn't. She was wary of him at first. They all were those first days. The longer was there, however; the less they all seemed to hold such disregard for him. Especially, her.

It was strange staying in a house with someone he barely spoke to. Most of those mornings, he found that she was up and out right at the break of day usually without any sign of her even being there except for the hastily made bed and the sweatpants that were folded up by the pillows. During the day, she avoided him to the best of her ability, nodding on occasion when she checked up on the work that he was doing. Her father was one of the members of the town's group that had been out there when they ran into the Fireflies. He didn't tell her about how they mowed them down when they wouldn't give up information on the plant and what kind of condition it was in or how her father pleaded with the man heading up the Firefly expedition, writhing in agony and blood on the floor, to just let him go. Though he could tell from the look in her eyes whenever they caught his, she had some idea.

The morning he was initially supposed to leave, he had, by some miracle of god, woken up before her and set out some (in his opinion) shitty instant coffee for her before leaning up against the table that sat in the kitchen, which he realized, as he almost fell over, was wobbly. In his head, he could hear the same exact rumbling tones of both his father and his older brother muttering about the same thing: "Damn leg makin' this piece a' shit go all damn cattywampus." With the tools she had left for him to use throughout his stay, he started working on the leg of the table based upon the memories of his dad and brother fixing the same thing in the past, but unfortunately, he didn't hear her footsteps come down the stairs and into the kitchen. His hair—though it could barely be considered more than a thin layer of blonde fuzz around his hear—was no match for the sharp edge of the solid wood table when he jumped up against it after she shouted at him, demanding to know what he was doing.

With all the rain, the wound on his head at barely healed at all. Even though it wasn't even close to the worst he ever had, it was painfully noticeable when he would lie down to go to sleep at night, feeling both the bristles of his hair and the cotton of the pillowcase. She did her best to patch up the cut that morning, and it hurt like hell, not that he should have expected anything less from anything that would be disinfecting an open wound. The constant pattering of rain on his head was no help to the healing process and putting a hat on had only irritated it more. At one point, during the middle of his second week staying there, the irritation had been distracting enough during his day's work that he felt the urge to ask her to attempt to clean it up again, but when he came upstairs to talk to her, he found her with wet blonde hair plastered to her shoulders and a towel wrapped around her body. It was a struggle to keep his eyes on her mortified expression, red rising to her cheeks and eyes open so wide he was sure they would pop right out of her head. With a hand shielding his eyes, he ran back down the stairs and stayed with his head down in the kitchen until he heard her slip off into the living room. He ended up doing his best to patch himself up in the bathroom mirror that night.

She was a pretty girl. Prettier than any girl he had seen in a long time. Her hair was a pale, sandy blonde that came down to just around her shoulders and looked a little stringy when she took it down after being out in the rain all day. He hadn't gotten the chance to take a long enough look at her eyes, but he was beginning to think they were grey. Some days, when he would see her sharing a light chuckle with a member of the community, he was certain they were blue. Others, he could have sworn they were a light green, but those were the days like the first day he met her. The days when she was so stern, so fierce, her eyes narrowed into slits, letting only a slight bit of color peek out as she spouted off threats or orders. She held things together better than he could recall of anyone since the world had gone to hell. She was kind when she needed to be and firm at other times, but the entirety of her person seemed to give off an overwhelming sense of caring to him. Even if she wasn't showing him any sort of personal acknowledgement apart from their agreements to let him stay a few more days or the one-off conversations they had here or there when there were both in her house, she was willing to let him stay there regardless of him being a member of the people who had been such a serious threat to them.

By the time he saw her wrapped up there in just a towel, his heart didn't need that to make it start racing when he looked at her. He liked listening in on her discussing the plans for the day with the men of the town, hearing her voice grow lower and more serious when the initial conversation began and finding it rise, soften when things were sorted out. Sometimes, he would peek out from the sides of the roofs when he would hear her busying herself in the town, getting word via walkie-talkie about how the few engineers they had up at the plant were doing. As it turned out, her father was working with them to try to get electricity running to the town, which is exactly what the Fireflies had wanted: a working plant to sustain power for their own use. Most news she received, had her sighing and running her hand over her rain-covered face in frustration.

In the middle of his third week there, it was the first sunny day they had since he arrived, and he was more than happy to work on the patchwork roofing jobs he had been doing for two and a half weeks on and off at that point. Each one he finished with the hope that maybe when the weather was better they could find supplies to fix them permanently, but based upon her treatment of him, he wasn't holding his breath on staying into the spring or summer. The woman living in the house with her young daughter had lost her husband in the Firefly massacre, so he kept quiet other than letting her know that he was going to be up on the roof.

As he finished up the last temporary patch, he found himself caught up in the sound of her voice talking to a crackly one belonging to a man over the walkie-talkie, groaning and sighing as he hammered away at the roof. He hadn't noticed that the woman had come out of her house to talk to her. As he lowered himself down the ladder, he was careful to miss the rung that was beginning to give way under his weight when he stepped on it. Once he was down far enough, his plan was to slip off the ladder and onto the porch as to avoid more stress on the rungs of the old, wooden ladder. "Thank you." The woman's voice was soft in tone, but loud enough to startle him just as he was making his way onto the porch. When his head hit the gutter hanging off of the roof over the porch, he couldn't help but think he shouldn't be getting startled as easily as he had been after living more than ten years in a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world where there were much more terrifying things than someone talking to him when he didn't expect it.

"Christ," he hissed, hopping down from the porch's railing and onto the creaky wood of the porch itself. He could hear the woman apologizing over from where she was standing, but he raised his hand to wave her off. "No, I'm fine. My pleasure t'fix your roof up for ya', ma'am." Though he tried his best to not sound irritated, he was afraid it wasn't working so well. The truth was he wasn't annoyed with her, but rather, the head he seemed destined to hit on everything possible for the rest of his life. He brought a hand up to the top of his head, still covered in the short blonde fuzz, feeling where the previous head wound had been. Bringing his hand back down in front of his face, there was a sizeable red spot in the center of his hand. "Great."

The woman was moving over to him, saying something about getting his head cleaned up, but the blonde grabbed her arm. "I'll get it." She came towards him with a look of purpose on her face. "C'mon. Let's go." She didn't stop for more than a moment to look at and speak to him, but it was more than he had gotten in all of his two and a half weeks there. In fact, it was the first time in public that she had even acknowledged him when he was near her since he arrived. He watched as she continued on the pathway to her house, feeling the warmth of his blood trickling down the side of his head. "I'm not waiting all day." She rounded the corner at the end of the tattered, old street that the houses lined, not stopping for a second to see if he heard her or comprehended what she had said.

It took him a moment to do just that and jog to catch up with her, although by the time he got moving she was almost to the steps leading up to her porch and the blood he knew was coming from the old cut that had never quite healed was getting dangerously close to the collar of his shirt. He watched her push through the front door without even seeing if he was behind her or not, and he quickened his pace. If anything, he didn't want to piss her off, assuming that could drastically shorten his time there. Besides, he didn't want to anger her anyway because, though he wouldn't admit it, he liked hearing the softness in her voice when she wasn't being sharp.

Just as soon as he came up to the steps, she handed him an old rag that looked like it had seen better days. "Here." The material was starting to bunch up into little balls on the surface, and there were more holes in it than a chunk of Swiss cheese. "That blood looks like it's coming down pretty fast, and I don't need you getting it all over the place." She took the rag from his hand and dabbed it on the back of his head, where he could feel the warm and all too familiar sensation of blood rolling over his skin. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, but this time they looked blue. He couldn't stop himself from watching her as she went over the trail of blood with the ratty rag. "Come inside. Looks like that thing never healed up right."

The house always smelled a little wet and dusty. Not that he minded, he was thankful to have a roof over his head, but it was something he had taken note of. That morning, he could see the dust rise from the old floorboards in the rays of sunshine coming through the windows as he walked down the halls in preparation of the day ahead of him. He had no idea he'd be hunched over by the counter once again while she grumbled something about him making a habit of hitting his head on things as she poured peroxide onto a cotton ball. "Might sting," was all she said a moment before the pinching sensation of the liquid in a cut came to him. He inhaled sharply trying to ignore the stinging in his scalp that was accompanied by the fizzing that he had grown accustom to over the years.

Her hands made their way over the light dusting of hair on his head, checking for any other scratches that may have occurred when he so stupidly hit his head… _again_. He really felt like he was turning into a bumbling teenager around her, growing clumsier and clumsier as he admired her from a distance. She let a new round of disinfecting begin on his wound: this time it didn't sting or fizz up as much to his relief. "I really think you either need to grow your hair out or be more careful because I don't know if we'll have enough supplies to keep cleaning your ass up." It was hard to tell if she was joking with him or being blunt, but the surprising softness of her hands was enough to distract him from the thought entirely.

She pressed some gauze up against the cut gently before taping it down into place on the sides. For someone who could sound so hard and tough, her touch was so kind and soft. It was the side he knew she had, but she hadn't shown it to him for reasons he could not blame her for. Each time she pressed her fingers against his skin, he felt like there were little barbs in her, causing him to feel the tiniest sensation similar to pinpricks. He wondered if she felt them, too, though that was increasingly unlikely, considering how unfazed she was while she worked. "There." She came back down onto flat feet to stand in front of him. "That should do it."

He nodded, simply staring at her, finding that her eyes even looked a bit hazel in the light he was looking at them now. Her face looked a little lighter than it did normally when she was looking at him, cluing him in, in hindsight, that she may have actually be joking with him previously. Her cheeks were stained pink from the chilliness outside and having to stand on her toes and concentrate for a lengthier period of time. Her hair, pulled back, looked a little stringy and dirty, like she might have avoided bathing herself after she had run into him in the hallway in just a towel.

Before he could stop himself, his lips were pressed against her cheek. She gasped in his ear, his lips lingering on the warmth of her flushed cheeks. He couldn't help but silently hope that she would do or say something to him even though it was the stupidest thing he had done in quite some time. He was kissing a woman—albeit on the cheek—who had done everything she possibly could have to avoid him over the prior two and a half weeks. Not his brightest moment. "Thank you," was all he whispered before he snuck around her and then up the stairs.

His things were all still packed in case he had to leave at any given moment. If there was going to be a moment where he would probably have to leave, it would be this one. His stomach churned with anger towards himself. He kicked himself mentally for doing something so dumb. They had a good thing going there, that community. It was something he wouldn't have minded being a part of for a long time, but he had to go and do that. Sure, maybe he was willing to admit at that point that he had developed a small crush on the girl. He wasn't entirely sure if it was worth risking the chance to have a new start there, though.

He climbed up the creaky stairs for what he assumed was the last time, making his way down the narrow hall to the room he had been staying in. It took her a week of referring to him as "Firefly" to even ask him what his name was. How could he think that the right course of action was to kiss her cheek as a thank you? Saying it would have sufficed, but he couldn't do what he should do. He had to go and screw everything up just as things were beginning to look up for him. She was probably standing in the kitchen, wondering why in the hell he thought he could do something like that.

A hand on his arm triggered the same startled response as everything those days seemed to, but his heart fell back into the steady thundering in his chest when he realized it was just her there. She stared at him through the mostly dark hallway, a few rays of light splashing on her face through the open door next to them. "Listen, I'm real sorry. I didn't mean t'upset ya' if I did, and I'll just be on my—"

She pulled him towards her, hesitating a moment once they were chest-to-chest, before she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to pull his lips down to hers. It was not soft and gentle like the touch of her fingers against his head earlier. Her kiss was hard and rushed, almost a little desperate, and it shocked him completely. He stood there with her lips to his paralyzed for a good ten seconds, standing with his eyes wide and hands out to the sides, unsure of what to do with them at that very moment. Once he finally got his act together, he was sure she was going to pull away and ask him to leave, but when his hands found her waist, pulling her flush against him, her other hand found its way up to the side of his head, careful of his makeshift band aid.

Her lips tasted like peaches that most likely came out of a can. It reminded him of the ones he remembered so fondly from when he was little. Sitting in the hayloft of the old barn with his older brother, legs dangling over the horses, chomping down on fresh peaches. She was warm and sweet even if the kiss was rough and almost felt a little unsure. He could feel the little pinpricks from the invisible barbs all over his body now. With a hand tangled in her hair, he hoped to god that she could feel them, too.

Grunting as he hit the wall behind them, he felt her finally pull away, dreading the news he was assuming she was going to drop on him after. She stayed pressed against him, to his surprise, panting, chest heaving just like his was at that moment. "Stay," she let out as more of a breath than even a whisper. Her eyes lifted up to his, and though he couldn't see their color in the darkness, he didn't care.

His thumb ran along her cheek bone, savoring the fire the flush in her cheeks was giving off. "Alright." He looked back down at her, straight in the eye, nodding. "Alright."


End file.
